Tokyo3 in the Sea of Time
by Andrew Aelfwine
Summary: Once again, Evangelion becomes a silly comedy as Tokyo-3 is transported back to the Bronze Age. Only it's not quite the Bronze Age we learnt about in intro archaeology... Fusion (sort of) with SM Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time


Tokyo-3 in the Sea of Time  
An extremely silly fusion fanfic  
by Andrew Aelfwine

Characters of Ranma ½ and Neon Genesis Evangelion and situations of S.M. Stirling's Domination of the Draka and Nantucket Trilogy belong entirely to their respective creators and publishers.

They're merely borrowed for this non-profit fanfiction.

Lime warning. Poly warning. Het warning. Femmeslash warning. Bi warning. Cute and cuddly Draka warning. Silliness warning. Yours Truly warning.

Archona, African Continent, Terra  
The Domination of the Draka  
Anime-Draka Crossover Timeline  
1500 hours local time, 6 July, Year 422 of the Final Society

The Archon Kasumi Ingolfsson signed her three hundredth document of the day, a renewal of the executive order forbidding importation of spiders to the planet Mars. Folding it neatly into a slender dart, she threw the order a hundred meters across the glassed-in atrium of her office and into the waiting hand of her secretary, a transgene dog-monkey.

The dog-monkey, Washoe Laikovic d'Govvn, who as it happened was not only the most powerful subject-race bureaucrat in the entire Domination but also a former top batsman in the zero-gravity cricket leagues and a direct descendent of the timeline's first canine and simian spacetravellers, wagged his tail. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say, as he was dangling by said appendage from a limb of the dwarf redwood that served him as both desk and chair, that his tail wagged his body like a furry brown-and-white pendulum.

"Pass that along, Washoe," Kasumi said, "then take the rest of the day off."

"I live to serve, your archonliness." He flipped himself onto the upper surface of his branch, bowed, and swung out the office exit.

Kasumi put away her pen and turned off her desk. Tapping the dragon-shaped brooch at her throat, she phased her clothes from the severe black military jacket, breeches and jackboots that were her working dress as ruler of the solar system to the soft pink tunic, loose trousers, and sandals that she had favoured forty-five decades ago as a teenager, a girl with no higher ambitions than to manage her family's plantation, command a cohort of tanks, and do her part in the utter defeat of her people's hereditary enemies. _And to see my sister Akane married to Ranma Von Shrakenberg,_ she reminded herself. _My one great failure. And my greatest unexpected success._

Thinking of which, she reached out along her transducer link. _:Darlings, would you come to my office? Please?_

Minutes later, the lift doors dilated behind her with a soft wooshing sound and her two favourite genetically engineered posthumans in all the worlds came tumbling through, arm in arm, lightly winded from their thirty kilometer sprint. They wore informal battledress; this afternoon they'd been training new members of the elite Archonal guard, a mixture of personnel from their own race, _Homo Drakensis_, with such warrior subject species as neopenguins, hamsteroons, and fuzzy bunnies. "Oy, Kasumi! You called?"

"Beautiful Archon-girl want Shampoo?"

"Yes. Hug? Please?" Her spice caught her between them and held her tight. She twined her fingers round Ranma's braid, and buried her face against his chest.

"Beautiful Archon-girl have rough day?" Shampoo whispered, nuzzling just behind her left ear.

"When they made me Archon I thought I'd be doing something useful. Fighting the Samothracians, conquering new worlds, awarding grants and prizes to our finest artists and scientists. Instead, I'm signing bits of paper and making speeches thanking the Siblinghood of Sentient Rodents for their valuable contribution to the Domination's health and well-being. As for the Samothracians, they're too busy selling the Klingons cowboy movies and fast food franchises to fight us or anyone else.

"I'm just so bloody _bored_."

"Our Kasumi's bored, Shan. What shall we do?"

"Archon and loyal Citizen-spice could screw like wild bunnies."

"That's fun, but we do it all the time. Don't forget, sweet, we have five times the libido of any other sentient species."

"Right. Could hunt feral humans?"

"It doesn't work that way anymore, Shan. Feral humans are a protected species."

"Sorry. Shampoo forget. Could play with alternate universe, transporting twenty-first century city back to Bronze Age and creating serious historical conundrum."

"Sounds fun, Metic Citizen."

"Shampoo tired be Metic Citizen! Shampoo be Metic Citizen four centuries. Shampoo tired talk like this all time. I can speak correct Japanese!

"We call it 'Talk' now, remember?"

"We do?"

Kasumi sighed. "Yes, Ranma. We have for the past three hundred years."

"Oh."

"And Shan? If I have enough fun with your game, you can be a full Citizen. And get up every night to tell the Servus there aren't any monsters under their beds, just like all the rest of us."

"Maybe Shampoo like be Metic Citizen, after all."

Tokyo-3  
The Empire of Japan  
Evaverse alternate 2323.55 (notated according to the Horaki system)  
2155 hours local time, 7 July 2015

Captain Katsuragi Misato was on her fifth beer of the evening, and the current issue of _The Journal of Giant Robot Tactics_ was just as boring as it had been before she'd finished her first. She paused to admire her housemate and favourite teenaged male giant robot pilot, Ikari Shinji, who sat at the table doing his English homework.

"Misato," he said, "what's a 'molehole'?"

"The hole that a mole makes."

"What's a mole?"

"A spot on your skin, or a small rodent with weak eyesight who digs in the earth."

"Neither of those make sense. Here this Gwen character is falling through a 'molehole,' and now all of a sudden she's in a different timeline."

"Oh. I guess moles sometimes burrow through spacetime, as well as dirt."

"What?"

"Sure. Just like white rabbits do. Why're we talking about this, anyhow?"

"I don't know," Shinji said. "Foreshadowing, I gue-- hey! Look out the window!"

The sky was a milky, rippling white. Misato turned away, shook her head, and looked again. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"I think so."

"You haven't been drinking, have you?"

"No."

"Damn. I was hoping I was finally having some influence on you."

"What do you think it is?"

"Looks like an opalescent energy field. Probably we're being transported to another universe or into Faërie or something like that."

"What should we do?"

"Go outside and mill around. That's what they always do in movies when this kind of thing happens."

"Okay. Could I have a beer?"

She paused for a moment. "Shin-chan. You're serious?"

"Yes."

"Yay!" She picked him up and hugged him, kissed him on both cheeks, set him back down on his feet, and stuffed a can into each hand.

By the time they'd got outside, the stars were back. Unfortunately, they weren't the same stars at all.

"Hello, Ikari-kun," said Horaki Hikari.

"Class Rep. What do you think is happening?"

She looked up at the sky. "Hmm. Offhand I'd say we've experienced a space-time shift. Looks like we're off the northeastern coast of North America and it's about 3015 BC."

"How can you tell?"

"I teach graduate level astronomy at Tokyo-3 University. I'm a child prodigy. And all they ever let me do at school is tell people to clean things up! It's not fair."

"Well," Misato said, "from everything I've read, the first thing you're supposed to do when your city has been transported back in time is form a ruling council to take arbitrary control. You want to be on ours?"

"Sure!"

"Want a Yebisu?"

"I'd love one."

"Captain Katsuragi? Could I have one as well?"

Misato turned round. Her other giant robot pilot stood behind her in the street, dressed in a freshly pressed school uniform. _Hmm,_ Misato thought, _does she truly not have any other clothes? She might be really cute, in the right outfit._ Visions of the slender, pale girl wearing a black leather bustier, puffed and slashed sixteenth century men's breeches in red and black velvet, and thigh high boots of glove soft leather, like some demitransvestite Elizabethan dominatrix, danced before her mental eyes. She hastily pushed them down. "Rei," she said, "Why are you here?"

"My disaster manual contains orders to 'go outside and mill around' when the sky fills with an opalescent energy field." Rei brushed short, messy blue hair from her eyes with one hand, and with the other she held out a thick paperback titled _The Official United Nations Disaster Manual. Volume One: Signs, Portents, Energy Fields, and other Aerial Phenomena_.

"Okay."

"Here, you can have one of mine," Shinji said, holding out an unopened can.

"Thank you."

Misato chortled. "Shin-chan, you little devil!"

"I didn't mean it like that!"

Rei reached out and pinched his cheek. "You look very sweet when you're embarrassed, Ikari-kun."

His eyes expanded to fill half his face. "Rei?"

She grinned. "Aren't mysterious dislocations supposed to induce personality changes?"

The morning found them gathered in one of the Geofront conference rooms, with the NERV staff and a few unimportant characters from the city government, none of whom merited a name or title. Misato sat at the head of the table, Shinji and Rei flanking her.

"Miss Horaki?" Misato said. "Have you confirmed your speculations of last night?"

"Yes. There's no doubt about it. It's 9 am, the first of May, 3014 BC, and Tokyo-3 occupies the coordinates formerly associated with the island of Nantucket. That last bit was the trickiest; I thought we might have replaced Martha's Vineyard for a while there."

"Thank you, Miss Horaki," Misato said. "Since we're living in a time predating the establishment of NERV, the UN, the Empire of Japan, and the International Brotherhood of Giant Robot Workers, I'm declaring the Provisional Republic of Tokyo-3. All of us here, with the exception of the nameless characters, are now members of the Governing Council of the Republic."

"Hey!" shouted one of the nameless characters, "what gives you the right?"

"This," Rei said, drawing the sword she'd brought along for just such an eventuality. Graceful as a cat, she leapt up to the table and struck. The body fell backwards and out of the story, much to the later relief of the janitorial staff.

"Oh," said the nameless character sitting nearest to the empty chair. "That's all in order, then." His companions nodded.

"Okay," Misato said, reading from the _The Official United Nations Disaster Manual. Volume Sixteen: For Castaways in Time_, "the next item on the list is :'Contact the nearest agricultural chiefdom and purchase wheat, barley, horses, pigs, and cattle'. From what Horaki-kun tells us, the nearest agricultural chiefdom is somewhere in Western Europe."

"And just how are we going to talk with a bunch of Bronze Age Western Europeans?" Ritsuko asked.

"The manual doesn't say, but I'm sure we'll manage somehow. You've studied ancient Western languages, haven't you, Doctor Fuyutuski?"

"Wrong place, wrong time. My specialty is first century Aramaic."

"I might could help ya out, Katsuragi-san."

"Suzuhara? I thought you were only here because Horaki likes you."

"You think dat I'm some kinda dumb jock, just 'cause I'm big and emotional and I talk like dis? I'm a specialist in ancient European languages. I speak Proto-Basque, Proto-IndoEuropean, Pre-Homeric Greek, Proto-Celtic, and Proto-Liverpudlian! And da Class Rep speaks Lithuanian, doncha, Horaki-kun? Which jus' happens ta be da most archaic language in Europe."

Hikari blushed. "Yes."

"Umm, no offense, but why do you speak Lithuanian, Class Rep?" Shinji said.

"Perhaps her mother was from Vilnius?" Rei said.

Hikari blushed. "No reason, actually. It just helps the plot along."

"Isn't she beautiful?" Misato whistled a hornpipe and danced a few clumsy steps on the freshly holystoned deck of the hundred-gun frigate Queen Edgar's Revenge. "According to the papers I found in the glovebox, she was built by the Swiss in 1912 and saw action in the War of Sigmund's Couch. In 1945, she was sold to the Navy of the Republic of Greater Rhode Island. In 1954, she fought in the Second Battle of Labrador. In 1980 she was bought by the Khan of Vladivostok, and she served as his personal yacht until his heir sold her to NERV."

"Umm... Misato-san, I'm not all that good at history and geography, but I've never heard of most of those countries before, much less the rest of it."

"Neither have I, but that's what her papers say. I guess she came from an alternate history or something. Could explain all the old Ronald Reagan kung fu movies and Deng Xiaoping westerns I found with the videotape machine in my cabin."

Shinji craned his head to look up at the rigging. "Where did we find her, anyhow?"

"NERV has just about everything somewhere in the Geofront. She was in drydock in the basement, on the same level as the pikes and crossbows and stuff."

"We have all that, but we don't have enough money to pay for getting rid of dead Angels?"

"Exactly."

"Great. My father is the founder of an organisation which makes absolutely no sense. Speaking of which, where is he?"

"I haven't seen him since the Event. I'm sorry, Shin-chan."

"Don't be. Aside from the fact that he was an obsessive evil git who abandoned me after my mother died, he'd be completely out of place in the Bronze Age. And I'd feel guilty if I saw him shot full of arrows and enjoyed it."

"Right." She pulled him into a short affectionate squeeze. "C'mon, let's go put on armour and hit each other with swords for a bit."

"What?"

"We're going into a land of violent barbarians. If we don't practice our martial arts skills, we'll wind up as mincemeat."

"But we don't have martial arts skills."

"Of course we do."

"I don't remember learning any."

"Neither do I. But watch!" She flowed into the Galloping Pheasant form, third variation, of the Northern Ta Ma De school of kung fu. "C'mon, Shin-chan, try it!"

He did, matching her easily. "You're right. How'd this happen?"

With precise comedic timing, Hikari wandered into the scene. "Probably the same way I learned Lithuanian."

"Shouldn't we have reached England by now, Misato-san?"

"We're not going to England, Shin-chan. We're going to France instead."

"Why?"

"Because we're going to pick up a cute redheaded warrior girl who's going to help us finally get a lemon scene into this story."

"What? I thought Horaki and Suzuhara-- "

"They won't do it on camera."

"Oh."

Rei coughed. "I don't think you should be violating the fourth wall so casually."

"Why not?"

"Because it makes the story seem even sillier than it already is."

The shot switched to a tight closeup on the lookout's nest, where one of Shinji and Rei's classmates cried out "Land ho!" She still wore her school uniform, now accessorised with a cutlass slung over her left shoulder. A crossbow sat ready to hand beside her.

Seconds later the cameraman was carried off by a previously unknown species of giant albatross.

"Help me," he shouted. "You've got a crossbow! Shoot the bird!"

"Sorry," said the lookout. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Haven't you ever read 'Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner'? Shooting an albatross is the worst thing a sailor can do. Besides, you're just a two-dimensional one-joke character."

"So're you!"

"Not at all. I've got a name and everything."

"Right. If you've got a name, what is it?"

"Suzuki Akane. At your service. Not."

"You just made that up!"

"Fine. Let's see you come up with a name for yourself."

"Err... Camera... Cam... Cameron! Cameron Guy!"

"Mine's better!"

Growing weary of circling, not to mention the increasingly lame banter, the albatross ate the newly self-christened Cameron Guy before he could voice another comeback.

Beauvoir paused to whisper in the ear of the subchieftan who sat on her right; the woman left the campfire. The Amazon leader took another drag on her unfiltered cigarette, sipped at her anisette, and rattled off a long sentence in her nasal language.

Hikari cleared her throat. "She says: 'Ah, most noble Capitaine, your gifts are... magnifique. So much so, zat eet was difficile to match them. And that would be very bad for our honneur, non?'"

"Do you have to use that silly accent?" Misato said.

"It's very hard not to. She sounds exactly like Inspector Clouseau in the Lithuanian dub of Revenge of the Pink Panther."

"Oh. So, anyways, what's going on?"

"Bad sign, Cap'n. Dese chiefdom-level societies, dey don' like it when ya embarrass dem by givin' more den dey can return. It's part of da adaptation to da resource-poor environment."

"Cultural ecologist."

"Structural functionalist." The scientific prodigies gazed lovingly into each others' eyes.

"We're negotiating with dangerous locals, people. Keep your minds on the job."

Beauvoir was in public-speaking voice again. Hikari said "So, I you present nothing less than a princesse, captured from our enemies, les Boches!" Two Amazon warriors led a leashed captive into the circle.

Red hair spilled loose down the girl's back, held away from her face by enamelled metal clips. She wore only a tiny leather bikini and a studded collar round her neck. Obviously, she was meant as some kind of sex slave. Sure, the idea made an enjoyable fantasy, but meeting it in real life was an entirely different thing. And anyone who would treat such a gorgeous creature like an animal deserved to die. Painfully.

Misato reached for her pistol, and felt more than saw Shinji's hand dropping to lie on the hilt of his tachi, Rei gripping her naginata. _That perverted fat cow of a chieftain gets it first,_ she decided.

She blinked. The redhead laid her hand on her knee, smiling, and said, in accentless Japanese, "Don't worry, beautiful Captain. This is just a scene. I'm enjoying myself. If something bothers either of us, the safeword is 'pickle,' okay?"

"How'd you learn our language?"

"When I was very small, a time warp opened over my village. The sky rained with magical boxes that made sounds, and the silver disks that fit into them were called Berlitz courses."

"Oh. You're very fluent."

"Thank you."

"So, umm, what's your name?"

"Asuka. But you can call me whatever you want." She fluttered her eyelashes.

Giggling, an Amazon passed Misato a horn. She sniffed, resigned to red wine, or more of that citrus juice and champagne concoction. Instead, it was-- she sniffed again, hardly believing her luck-- "Yes! Beer!"

"Brewed under the Purity Law of 3765 BC," Asuka said. "They trade us cognac for it."

"Then... you aren't really enemies?"

"Oh, no, pretty Captain. That was centuries ago; now we're all members of the ProtoIndoEuropean Economic Community. We just play at raiding each other when we get bored. Everyone gets dressed up in armor, we ride around in chariots and fence with rattan swords, anyone who wants to play a bondage scene finds somebody cute on the other side to capture her, and meanwhile their men bake lots of pastry and baguette and ours cook lots of sauerkraut and wurst and at the end we have a big feast before everybody goes home to sleep it off."

Hikari and Touji were covering their ears. "Umm, Asuka-chan, I don't think you should talk about all this right now. You're making our scientists unhappy."

"Oh? Isn't that what people do in the future?"

"No, unfortunately... Wait a second. How'd you know we're from the future?"

"Magic. Just like how I knew I was going to meet a gorgeous older woman with purple hair, and a cute girl with red eyes, and an adorable boy who pretends to be a whimp even though he's a hero."

"Your name isn't Inverse, is it?" Misato asked, suddenly worried.

"No, that's somebody else's story."

"Good." She gulped a good half of the horn's contents.

"Oneesama? Could I have some of that? Please?"

"Would you call me Misato? Not Captain? And especially not Oneesama? Please?"

"Ohhh, all right." Misato held the horn to her lips.

Hours later, they staggered back to the ship. Most of the Amazons were asleep, and more than a few of the escorting NERV spear carriers had to be shaken awake. Hikari and Touji were whispering in each others' ears; Misato heard something about "deconstructing the paradigm of pre-post-postmodern erotic theory," and decided she didn't want to know what it meant.

"All right, Asuka," Misato said, "time for the collar to come off."

"Ohhhhh, I'm having fun. Please? Just a little while longer?"

"Pickle."

"You're no fun." Asuka reached up and undid the buckle. "Well, there's no point in wearing a slave girl outfit without the collar."

"I'm sure Rei can lend you some clothes."

"Clothes? Who said anything about clothes?" Asuka reached behind her back to untie her top. "Are we going somewhere tonight?"

"No, why?"

"Then why are you talking about my needing clothes?" She let the cups fall away from her breasts. Shinji made a sudden grab for his nose.

"Asuka, we're outside!" Misato said. "Didn't that Berlitz course you took say anything about a nudity taboo?"

"Nudity taboo? I sort of remember that phrase, but we couldn't figure out what it meant."

"I've never understood that one, either," Rei said. "But I think it's got something to do with why Shinji has that adorable blush all over his face."

"Maybe," Asuka said. "Want to find how far down it goes?"

"Sure!" Rei made a sudden grab for Misato's waist. "You're coming with us."

"Where? Me? Why?"

"To bed. Yes. Because you're gorgeous and we love you," Rei said.

Asuka had Shinji pinned up against the mainmast and was busily unbuttoning his shirt. "What odd things you people wear!" she said. "Haven't you ever heard of pins? Or laces?"

"Good heavens," Misato said, "how am I ever going to live this down? With my crew, much less when word gets back to Tokyo-3."

"You won't have to. Cos you're the Captain, and everybody thinks you're tremendously cool, and is sick and tired of watching you moon round after Shinji and me and never do anything about it. And because they'd all vote to legalise three-way cream cheese llama bondage if they thought you were into it."

"Llama bondage?"

"Stole the line from a book," Rei said. "And no, I don't want to know how it works, either."

"Good."

"No," Asuka said, a shirtless Shinji thrown over her shoulder. It was all Misato could do not to become lost in the interesting effects her roommate's struggles had on the redhead's breasts. "Good is what will happen once we're belowdecks."

Aida Kensuke might have envied Shinji, had he noticed the scene on the deck. But as it happened, Kensuke was as oblivious to the events taking place below his perch in the fighting tops as he was to those in distant Greece, where, at that very moment, the legendary Egyptian drag performer RuPaulpotep was, as a favour to her old show business friend, the goddess Thetis, about to give the hero Achilles his first lesson in passing for a girl.

Instead, Kensuke sat flipping through the pages of a collection of old pulp illustrations. "I can't believe it," he said over and over again. "I can't believe it. They're not real Amazons. They're not real Amazons." It was true. After five days, he had to accept what he had seen. Not one of these heavily armed women possessed a bronze bra. Nor even one of copper, tin, or gold.

He'd seen halters of linen, of leather, and wool. Halters woven from the hair of goats and dogs, or carefully stitched from the skins of birds and squirrels. Even girls without any binding at all, five of whom had slapped him and three of whom had tried to drag him back to their round thatched huts.

"Somewhere," he said, "there are real Amazons, wearing bronze bras and chain mail hot pants. I just have to find them. And then to protect them from whatever evil would force them to dress in leather breeches and unrevealing scale shirts. And I will, whatever it takes, whomever I must betray. Hear me, Boris Vallejo-Sensei, your student has not forgotten your teachings!"

Suzuhara rolled over in bed. "Oi, Hikari love, what was that shouting?"

"Just a bit of foreshadowing. Don't worry about it right now. Your childhood friend won't go rogue on us until at least next spring."

"That's good. He owes me a fiver."

"Mmm, that was lovely..." Misato murmured, snuggled between Asuka and Shinji, Rei pillowed on her chest.

"Damnation!" came a voice from the other side of the bulkhead. "The camera's broken!"

"Did we get anything?"

"Nothing. They'll have to do it over again."

"Cool."

"May I?" Rei whispered in Misato's ear.

"Of course."

Rei took the pistol from under the pillow and fired two shots. From behind the bulkhead there came a pair of thumps. "Good riddance to damn perverts," she said, replacing the weapon.

"How many cameramen is that killed to date?" Shinji said.

"I lost track at twenty."

"We've lost thirty," Misato said, "but two of those were taken alive on Long Island by those marauding Algonquian Amazons, the ones whose scene got cut cos the director thought that was too many Amazons in one story."

"Right. I forgot about them."

"Aren't we going to run out?" Shinji said. "Or what if they all quit?"

"No worries. They're just two-dimensional one-joke characters. Like the nameless guys."

"Now," Asuka said, "let's take their advice and do the last scene over again."


End file.
